


Homologous

by Neelh



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Stangst, Suicide, via lack of self-preservation and lab safety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 06:26:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6842698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But that's another universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homologous

**Author's Note:**

> [Homologous](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/homologous)  
>  **ADJECTIVE**  
>  Having the same relation, relative position, or structure, in particular.
> 
> (please read the tags for any triggers)

You watch your brother from the window, and you turn away when he reaches out to you, his desperation and fear so clear, it could not have been made more obvious if he had a neon sign over his head like the ones in shop windows, saying _HELP ME PLEASE_ in bright red. The window is slightly ajar, and a chilly breeze seeps through and makes you feel your arm hairs rise a little under your shirt sleeves, trying to catch the warm air and keep it circulating near your skin.

And in that moment, you realise something. You march downstairs, where your father reads his evening newspaper as he does every night, not even acknowledging the fact that his wife is shouting and crying because he’s kicked out her baby boy; does he even care? And you grab the paper and rip it out of your father’s grip, and you shout at him now. You don’t see him properly, because all that you can see is red and black and your hands are shaking, six fingers twitching, and why was Stan’s bag packed and ready to go?

You suddenly feel everything around you; the stifling air, your mother’s hand on your shoulder, the drip-drip-dripping and clunk-clunk of the pipes, your father’s harsh, unreadable gaze like frostbite rotting your flesh and making you feel your arm hairs raise a little under your shirt sleeves.

The next thing you know, your father has hit you; has dragged you out by your undone bowtie. You see him, hear him threaten your mother, and then you are thrown out just as unceremoniously as Stanley was.

You aren’t stupid. Some would say that you are, in fact, quite the opposite. Some would say that you are the biggest moron to ever exist on this mortal plane. But either way, you know that if you head to Glass Shard Beach, you will find the Stan o’ War. And there, you find Stanley, and you hug and sob and finally fall asleep in the hull of the boat.

 

-

 

You don’t know how this story ends. Maybe your mother brings you both clean clothes and lets you in the house when your father is away, and you both graduate high school and get good jobs and get a nuclear family each. Maybe you sail away on the Stan o’ War and find treasure and aliens and _‘babes’_ , whatever that means. Maybe you both live in Stan’s car, and try to survive. Maybe Stan starts drinking, and you do too because it’s some way of getting out of your mind and away from the silent resentment that both of you pretend that you don’t feel for each other, and you both get hooked on pills and powders because it helps you forget that you hate yourselves and the way that you project that hate onto each other. Maybe you both die in a car crash, or from an overdose. Maybe those things are accidents. Maybe they’re not. Maybe you live long and happy lives, though you probably won’t.

But that’s another universe.

 

-

 

Here’s another one.

You’re at Backupsmore, and you are hating every moment. Fiddleford tries so hard to cheer you up, but it’s a pretty difficult task when you can barely get out of bed in the morning and forget to eat more often than not. Your body hurts and you want to throw up, even though the nurses can’t find anything wrong with you, and moving even the slightest feels like you are losing a race to a sloth.

Sometimes you have enough energy to get dressed, even though you sometimes miss a button or two and can never put on more than your shirt and trousers. You head down to the lab on those days, to catch up on practical sessions that you missed in classes that you haven’t really attended in months. You know what those chemicals do when they are mixed together, but nevertheless, you carry out these experiments with quivering hands and occasionally enough sudden energy to splash acid up your arms. Even those accidents, you guess, are a good enough price to pay to feel a glimmer of pleasure once again.

One time, you guess you overdo it because the next thing you know, you’re waking up in a hospital ward and you can’t see out of one eye and your brother is sitting next to you. He says something about Ma, and something about Fiddleford being so scared and thinking that the call from Stanley in a desperate attempt to hear your voice again was the hospital about to say that you had died or something, despite the fact that you had only suffered nonfatal injuries.

Nonfatal meaning, according to the nurse, being blinded in one eye and left with permanent chemical burns all across the upper left side of your torso and face and your left arm.

 

-

 

In this universe, you probably drop out of university, to your unending shame. Stanley sleeps in the bedroom next to you, a thin wall separating your beds. He’s twitchier now, and sometimes wakes you up from an uneasy slumber with hypnopompic screams that are quickly muffled. Neither of you would ever say anything. Of course, this is all hypothetical. Maybe you stay at Backupsmore and get medication for what apparently is melancholic depression, and Stanley and Fiddleford wait outside the therapist’s office. Maybe Stanley leaves after he sees that you are recovering. Maybe that’s a setback to your improvement. Maybe it’s not.

 

-

 

And the universe where your plans came to fruition; where you had successfully hidden two books with a gold foil hand on each cover, and the third one is going with your brother to be hidden somewhere far away, on the other side of the world, where you will never see it, because you will never see anything else away from these four walls again.

Stanley arrives, and when you let him in out of the freezing air outside - arm hair rising under your shirt sleeves - and inside the house, he asks you about your life, if you’ve been sleeping, if you need help. You don’t take him far into the portal room, and leave soon after in order to give him the book and send him away with enough money to pay for gas and really good repairs for his car, which is kind of falling apart. He looks at you, clutching the first journal and the wad of money inside. His eyes are wide, pleading, and damp with tears that threaten to spill over. Somehow, when you make his expression out through your own blurry vision, you know that your faces are almost perfect mirrors.

On an impulse, you hug him, squishing the journal between your torsos. You grip the back of his jacket as hard as you can with dull, sensationless fingers. It’s made of nylon, and it takes a lot of effort for you to cling to the slippery fabric. At some point, Stanley gets one arm free and returns the embrace, swaying a little bit on the spot. He’s a lot bigger than you remember; or maybe you just got smaller. After a moment of thinking, you can’t remember the last time you ate a proper meal instead of a half-rotten apple. You hope that Stanley’s doing okay, no matter what is put in front of your face to evidence otherwise.

You try to blink back your tears, nestled on Stanley’s shoulder, smelling his familiar weird sweaty smell, but eventually you give up and just let them fall onto the fur hood of his jacket. Soon enough, you feel your hair beginning to get damp from warm salt water.

At some point, he apologises. You apologise back, and it’s never really clear what you are saying sorry for. Maybe this Stanley thinks that it is at first for letting him be kicked out and then sending him away to bury some weird book somewhere in Australia or something.

You’ve written your will and left everything to Stanley; made it clear to the lawyer as soon as you had settled on this plan that everything you had was going to your estranged twin. You’re not stupid; you know who those cold calls were from. You recognised the muffled sobs, no matter how badly the phone lines mangled the noise.

When he has been gone for six days, having phoned you as he boarded the boat to wherever, you slide a black box from under your bed and open the padlock with the little silver key from your breast pocket. You do not cry as you remove the gun from its case; as you carefully load it with a single bullet; as you place the cold circular barrel under your chin.

You stare straight ahead and pull the trigger.

 

-

 

And you still think ahead about this future. You hope that this iteration of your brother isn’t horrifically affected for the rest of his life by finding his twin’s corpse on the floor. You hope he lives happily in that little wooden shack that you love so much. You hope that he never really understands why you blasted your own brains out, but there are so many universes where so many things can happen that the possibility is almost a certainty that your brother will discover that evil demon. Everything could happen; everything has happened; is happening. Everything will be and will never be.

And right now, you are on this boat. You have everything you could wish for; your brother, your mysteries, your extended family. Hell, your life is pretty much perfect!

But still, every so often, you think about the other versions of yourself from all of the other dimensions. You imagine their lives. And you are so, so, so jealous of the ones who did not survive.

**Author's Note:**

> ahahaha i have a performance tomorrow and it is really late


End file.
